Listen to the Disturbing Audio of Children Being Separated From Their Parents at the Border

The debate around what is happening to families arriving at U.S. border towns seeking entry into the country reached a fever pitch yesterday after ProPublica released audio tape of children crying out for their parents.

According to ProPublica, the tape was recorded last week inside a U.S. Customs and Border Protection detention facility. ProPublica reports that the person who made the recording asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, but that the tape was passed along to well-known civil rights attorney Jennifer Harbury, who has lived and worked for four decades in the Rio Grande Valley along the Texas border with Mexico. Harbury provided it to ProPublica.

The audio has not yet been independently verified by large outlets.

On the tape, which you can listen to below, children are heard screaming for “Mami” and “Papá” and crying so hard at times it sounds difficult for them to breathe. (Warning: Some things you hear will be upsetting and disturbing.)

A border patrol agent can be heard saying, "Well, we have an orchestra here. What’s missing is a conductor.”

A girl, identified by ProPublica as a 6 year old from El Salvador, can be heard asking if she can call her aunt. “At least can I go with my aunt?” she sobs. “I want my aunt to come so she can take me to her house.” There is some discussion and then she is heard saying, “My mommy says that I’ll go with my aunt, and that she’ll come to pick me up there as quickly as possible, so I can go with her.”

At the end of the tape, you hear the call being made.

ProPublica reached out to the little girl’s aunt at the same number. “It was the hardest moment in my life,” she told them. “Imagine getting a call from your 6-year-old niece. She’s crying and begging me to go get her. She says, ‘I promise I’ll behave, but please get me out of here. I’m all alone.” The woman is worried that if she tries to intervene, it could hurt her own chances for asylum. (She is seeking it for herself and her own daughter.)

“I know she’s not an American citizen,” the aunt said of her niece. “But she’s a human being. She’s a child. How can they treat her this way?”